Rack Magazine

Somebody’s dog missed out on two really GREAT chew toys.

Being raised on the family farm in west-central Minnesota during the war years of the 1940s, Jim Matter grew strong and resourceful trapping muskrats near the Buffalo River in sub-freezing temperatures and hunting prairie chickens with his dad whenever the two could slip away from their never-ending farm chores. A “big” kid, Jim eventually topped out at 6 feet, 5 inches tall.

“I never played sports because my dad always needed me on the farm,” said Jim, now 82. “But I did get to hunt with my older brother Jerome, who was 12 years older than me, and I killed my first deer when I was around 11 or 12.

“Everyone hunted meat back in those days. We occasionally killed some nice bucks, but we never kept the antlers from any of the ones we shot. I can remember our dog chewing on racks out in the yard. Things are so different today,” he said.

In 1957, Jim took over his dad’s farming operation. Eight years later, he and his wife Betty bought a local mom-and-pop grocery store. With five sons and two daughters, the couple had plenty of good help for the store and farm.

“During the early ’70s, several store customers who lived in the area began talking about an outlandish buck that had been seen several times just west of the small community of Callaway near our farm,” Jim said. “One of the neighbors even found a large 12-point shed that might have come from the buck.

“The local rural mail carrier actually took a shot at a buck he described as the biggest deer he’d ever seen. Unfortunately for him, he missed,” Jim grinned.

Jim first became aware a giant buck was on his property during the summer of 1973, when he and his third-oldest son Alfred were out working.

“Alfred was cultivating sunflowers on a tractor around noon when he looked across the field and thought he saw me waving my shirt,” Jim remembers.

“Each day at noon, when it was time to go in for dinner, I would often stand at one end of the field where Alfred was working and wave my shirt as a signal to come in,” he added.

“On that particular day, as Alfred got closer to the object that he assumed was me, he did a double take. It was a huge buck thrashing its massive antlers on some of the tall sunflower plants,” he said.

“It was an awful big buck,” Alfred told his father. “It had all sorts of points and strips of velvet hanging off the antlers.”

By the time deer season arrived that year, Jim had seen the buck once near his property, but he really had no plans to hunt that particular deer. As always, he would simply shoot whatever happened to cross his path.

On Friday morning, Nov. 12, 1973, Jerome called and said, “Let’s go hunting today.”

Jim planned to work in a field that morning on his ’69 Versatile tractor. Since his oldest sons were all in school during the week, Jim and Jerome frequently hunted with Jim’s hired man. The three farmers were always ready to collect some venison for the freezer.

The plan was for Jerome and the hired man to do some scouting down by the river, while Jim finished up making a few furrows in the field he was working. Knowing he would be hunting later that day, Jim had put his rifle in the cab of the tractor.

Jim was hard at work when he spotted two bucks and a doe near a marshy cattail slough several hundred yards across the field. One of the bucks wore a very large rack. The other was noticeably smaller.

The big buck was trying to keep the smaller one away from the doe.

“I shut off the tractor, grabbed my rifle and sneaked out the door of the cab,” Jim remembered. “Since the country was almost entirely open, I began a long stalk toward the three deer, mostly crawling on the ground.

“I think they got suspicious and eventually went into some high grass and cattails to hide. Every few minutes, I would glimpse the big buck trying to run off the smaller one,” he said.

It took Jim nearly an hour and a half to reach the marshy area where the three deer were hiding.

“When I got within about 75 yards of where they were, I decided to wait right there and hope to get a shot when the big one showed,” he said.

Meanwhile, brother Jerome and the hired man began to worry.

Something must have happened to Jim, Jerome thought, knowing it was not like his brother to be more than an hour late for a rendezvous. Jerome asked the hired man to drive back over to the field where Jim was working to see what was the matter.

Moments later, Jim saw a pickup coming down the field road. He knew things were going to come to a head very quickly because the road passed very close to the cattail slough where the deer were hiding. Sure enough, as the truck neared, the three deer went into panic mode and started running through the slough and tall cane grass.

“I knew I didn’t have a decent shot, but I aimed and took a quick one anyway,” Jim said. “It was hard shooting through all that tall grass, and I missed him clean at about 75 yards.

“It didn’t take long for the hired man to figure out what was going on, and he was very sorry for spooking the deer,” he added.

Knowing which way the deer were headed, Jim and the hired man decided to drive down the fence line and attempt to get in front of the fleeing deer. A few minutes later, they parked the truck in a low area and got out of the cab.

“There was a paved road just ahead of the deer, and we could see them maybe 500 to 600 yards away, watching the cars go by,” Jim said. “I walked down the fence line a short distance, hoping the deer would turn and start coming back in our direction.”

Jim propped his rifle on a fencepost and waited.

“If I get a chance, I’m going to take a shot,” he told his hired man.

He knew it would be a very long shot, at best. Topped with a 4X scope, his .308 semiauto was sighted-in for 200 yards.

“We didn’t think the deer would cross the paved road,” Jim said. “Sure enough, they sort of made a loop and started heading back in our general direction. As they closed the distance, the doe was first, the younger buck was second and the big one was last. It appeared to be tired and seemed to be looking for a good place to bed down.”

When they got as close as they were going to get, Jim allowed for some Kentucky windage by holding a little high and a little in front of the big buck. He carefully squeezed off a shot from his steady fencepost rest.

The buck appeared to flinch, and then all three deer ran into another grassy cattail slough. The distance was later paced off at around 400 yards.

As Jim and the hired man approached the slough, the doe and smaller buck jumped up and ran. Turning to Jim, the hired man, who did not have his rifle with him, yelled, “Shoot that buck for me!”

Under the Minnesota party hunting law, Jim could legally shoot a second buck if his hunting partner had a valid license in his possession. Jim made a quick shot, and the young 8-pointer collapsed.

A few yards ahead in the cattails, the two men found Jim’s enormous 34-point buck stretched out on the ground.

“His knees were tucked underneath him as if he were sleeping,” Jim said. “My bullet hit him in the neck. He had a huge body. He was later weighed at 220 pounds, field-dressed.”

Jerome was bewildered when Jim and the hired man drove up with two fine bucks in the truck.

Unbeknownst to Jim, his Becker County giant would become the new Minnesota state record. It also ranked sixth in the world at the time.

The following year (1974), Mitch Vacoch shot a massive buck in Norman County that scored 269 1/8, which pushed the Matter Buck into second place.

Editor’s Note: Duncan Dobie’s new book, “Dawn of America Deer Hunting, A Photographic Odyssey of Deer Hunting History,” is now available online and through the author. Autographed copies can be purchased by calling (770) 973-8049.

This article was published in the October 2016 edition of Rack Magazine. Subscribe today to have Rack Magazine delivered to your home.

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